Pros:
Groves Parks is a mixed bag course. There's potential for a solid course, but right now it's more of a conglomerate of confusion than anything else.
- The course is mainly wide open. If you want to swing your sword by showing off your big arm, this is the course for you. The course is on the grounds of an old golf course, and some of the hole layouts seem to follow the ball golf method.
- The course does a good job of using the terrain to provide a good challenge, taking an advantage of the limited obstacles that are prevalent. There are limited trees on the course, so you'll see a lot holes with baskets place behind them - holes #2, 3, 4, 5, etc. Are you noticing a theme? There's also use of water, from a creek on #4 & 5, to a pond in play on #8 & 10.
- The rolling hills (yes, they're more like mounds, or Mounds) provide a little more challenge. #7 is a great example of a tougher uphill shot. You'll also see baskets placed in between miniature mounds and/or rough - #9 & 18 are good examples here.
- Tee signs are great. A suggestion to improve their usefulness would be to place them at the same layout on each hole - i.e. the gold, long layout.
- And, this might be the best thing this course has to offer: this is a disc golf only piece of land. I haven't come across a public park that is nothing but disc golf. What a huge bonus, and a tremendous sign of support from the city. As an out-of-towner, I don't know if it will remain that way. But, for the time being, it's awesome to have this swath of land solely dedicate to disc golf.
Cons:
This is where the confusion rears its ugly head. In essence, holes overlap each other, the signage is poor, hole distances are inaccurate, and there's a feel of repetitiveness. And that's just in the first five holes.
- The root of all these issues was the poor signage. Starting on hole #1, the listed distances are way off. My buddy and I teed off from the blue tee, which is listed at 471 feet. I threw a dud tee shot, and just cleared the red, short tee, which is listed 320 feet from the basket. I then landed my second shot, a Roc that I normally throw in the 225 foot range, 10 feet past the basket. Based on the listed distances, I threw my drive about 170 feet (from 471 ft tee to just past 320 ft tee), and my mid-range disc about 300 feet, or 75 feet longer than normal.
- On #2, we spot the tee sign, with no indication what layout it's located at, and then a blue tee about 40 feet behind it. We tee off from the blue tee, only to soon realize that was the blue tee for #4. We'd have known that if the signs were better marked. We finally found the blue, white and red tees, some of which were marked by with paper plates. Yes, on multiple holes, the tees are marked with numbered paper (or maybe they're Styrofoam) plates.
- On #3, the gold and blue tees are almost parallel to each other, but their distances are listed at 486 and 393 respectively. Hmmm.
- And issues like this kept creeping up throughout. When something like this comes up on almost every hole on the front nine, you quickly sour on your disc golf experience.
- The other 'negative' about the course itself is the thick grass. As soon as my disc hit the ground, it stopped right there. The lack of rolls/skips takes away extra distance, which makes some of these holes play even longer.
- When I say this is a disc golf only piece of land, I mean this is a disc golf only piece of land. There's a port-a-jon near the unmarked parking lot, and that's it for amenities here. No real bathrooms, water fountains, drink machines, etc. The parking is right off the side of the road, and if you're not careful, it'd be easy to miss the course.
Other Thoughts:
Grove Park, in its current state, is an example of the parts being greater than the sum. I had high hopes for the course and was really disappointed. Knoxville's other
open course (Victor Ashe) does a great job of making an open course fun & challenging. Grove Park, on the other hand, comes up short.
- This seems to be a love/hate course. Some will love the wide open fields and the ability to let tee shots fly. Others will probably sour on the repetitiveness of the course, and the somewhat lack of variety here. Again, Victor Ashe succeeds in making similar, open holes feel different.
- This is the first course I've ever played where I walked off before finishing every hole. With nine extra holes, it now stands at 27. And with the frustration I was having here, I had gotten enough without playing all of those.
- Most of the problems I listed above can easily be fixed with a little work from the local DG club. Regular players tend to miss some of these issues because they're so familiar with the layout. Here in Charlotte, outsiders notice the poor signage at Renaissance, while most locals have never noticed the signs were wrong or missing altogether.
- As I said, a lot of holes, in and of themselves, are good. #1 is a fun starting hole; 2, 3 & 4 all offer some challenging layouts. But, when you're trying to sort through the clutter of finding tee pads and determining distances all the time, they lose their luster.
- #9 was a cool layout. Having the basket surrounded by mounds of tall grass gave a great risk/reward second shot.
- Despite all the issues, I can still recognize the positives this course has to offer. It probably speaks well of the course, that a low score for it is only a 3.0. That said, I feel this course should be closer to the 4.0 range. In due time, I hope it gets there.